


No Second Chances

by Alex_ius



Category: Wakfu
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 18:05:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14624156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alex_ius/pseuds/Alex_ius
Summary: After the events of s1, Nox would never expect to get a second chance.But can he take it, being the man he had became?And why did he get it in the first place?





	No Second Chances

_“Let's see…”_

_Xelor watched the sand in the sandglass slowly turn from black to its original golden color._

_This was the place where he liked to be the most, the edge of Xelorium right above the seemingly bottomless abyss. He could watch the World of Twelve from here comfortably, but today, he wasn’t just watching._

_The divine dimensions shook, but it wasn’t the ground that moved, and it weren’t just the dimensions that experienced it.  
The reality itself shifted a little, something that didn’t happen for quite a long time, but the gods knew exactly what was going on._

_A sound of jangling chains sounded behind him, and he slowly turned his head. Ancient dust fell down from from his helm - it looked like he didn’t move for millennia, but Sacrier, the goddess with her hands tied, knew that this is how Xelor always was.  
She crossed her legs and the chains jangled again._

_“What is it this time, Xelor?” she asked as she watched him tuck the sandglass back under his robes, monumental like a starry sky._

_“Just watch,” he answered, staring at one spot in the past of the world of Twelve, and then reached his remaining hand, covered with flickering stars, the one that wasn’t replaced by a machine just yet, and touched Sacrier on hers to pass his vision..._

_“No way!!” she screamed the moment she realized what he had done.  
“Are you aware that that man is a DANGEROUS LUNATIC who….” _

_Sacrier’s voice broke into pieces before she could finish. The Compassionate soul of the Goddess of Sacrifice couldn’t handle thinking about what happened in the Sadida Kingdom._

_“I’m just curious where this will lead,” Xelor said calmly before assuming the same position as before, immobile like an ancient statue of himself._

_And he watched…_

_As the events - the seed of which he had just planted - began to slowly reform the reality in front of him..._

~°.°~

It was unclear why the skinny, scabby-ridden boowolf came to this place. The cemetery was abandoned, and even its small hungry brain was slowly starting to realize that.

Or was it…

Near one of the graves, there lied someone, his limp, unmoving body hung over the cold stone as if he had passed out here crying. But the boowolf didn’t think about that. It just saw a defenseless victim it could fill its belly with.  
And so it growled and rushed towards, prepared to tear off the armor off this strange individual and sink his broken fangs into his flesh...  
Its nose was telling it that the prey is still fresh, but it had absolutely no idea that it would try to defend itself.

The hand of the man sprung forward and in an erratic, almost clock-like motion grabbed the neck of the surprised animal even before the man’s head raised up to look at what had attacked him.

The oddly dissonant, slightly mechanical honey-sweet voice echoed through the abandoned cemetery, not fitting the ragged, burned figure with flailing bandages and rumpled armor.

“Ahh-hahahaha… Igole, you trickster, what do you think you are doing? Sneaking on me like this...”

Nox looked at the boowolf, his mind hazy and tangled. He grabbed it with both arms, convinced that he was looking at his loyal pet. The animal was trying to get away, biting Nox’s arms, but it was too weak from the lack of food, and the Xelor’s grasp was too strong.  
Voices were screaming inside Nox’s head, small bits of the past he had experienced, and it was getting unbearable.  
He clawed his hands into the boowolf’s fur and the noise in his head calmed somewhat.

And then...  
_The cemetery filled with silvery glow and ticking of thousands of clocks, gongs banging, fine sand flowing in the sandglasses…_

Nox felt his very essence pulled towards the huge sandglass that appeared in the middle of the cemetery, it wasn’t just standing there, there was someone holding it with his giant hand. A hand black like the void, except for the flickering stars. It was impossible to tell if they were on the surface or inside, but it didn’t really make any difference anyway.

Xelor, this one word flashed in Nox’s head before the sandglass moved closer, and closer and then the glass part of it opened as if it was made of water and the grayish sand, mixed from the gold of the present and the black of the past, covered him.

His hands held the boowolf frantically despite the fact that he had already forgotten about its existence, and he felt himself sliding away, pieces of his worn armor falling on the ground next to the grave, and then everything went white…

~°.°~

It was a late morning in the forests in the outskirts of an unknown island city, as opposed to the evening that ruled the cemetery. This fact alone was rather suspicious.

Nox twitched, his head raising by itself as if it was detached from his for now limp body, then he sat up in one motion like a puppet after someone pulled all of its strings at once.  
He looked around, measuring the trees and counting the branches subconsciously, trying to figure out what had just happened. The vision of the huge Xelor’s sandglass was glowing in his brain, pushing all the other things aside.

Only now he realized he was still holding the poor emaciated boowolf, he was squeezing it so hard that the animal almost stopped breathing.  
He let the boowolf go and watched as it, instead of running somewhere into the woods, pulled its tail between its legs and for some unknown reason hid behind his knees.

“I see you’ve finally realized the hierarchy here,” Nox said, his voice jumping a bit in the middle, a wide smile visible under the bandages of his now maskless face. He put his hand on the back of the boowolf and he stepped forward to examine this new place.

“If it was really Xelor, he did it for a reason,” he thought aloud. “But what reason did he have, Igole? He didn’t care about me at all those two hundred years!”

The voice and behavior of the Xelor in ragged gray bandages changed, suddenly and fast like a wind turning its direction during the storm. He grabbed the boowolf and shook it with all his strength, so hard that its feet dangled back and forth as it yowled in terror.  
He shifted his gaze from the terrified boowolf and stared at the city on the horizon.

  
“What do we have to do here?? AaarghhHHh!!!”

But there was no voice to answer. Nox missed his Eliacube already… He felt lost and purposeless without it, and the only voices in his head ever since he’d lost it were the voices of his enemies threatening to stop him.

The man fell on his knees and grabbed his head violently, an if he could get rid of his insanity that way.

_“I’m just curious what will happen.”_

The rage disappeared as fast as it came, and Nox chuckled, just to himself.

“We will find out soon enough,” he said.

He felt weak. Even though he knew that his power was still there, it paled in comparison to the overflow of Wakfu he had been given by the Eliacube, and that was gone.  
He decided against teleporting for now.

Still holding the boowolf - which he in his delusion mistook for his long lost pet - by the loose skin on its back, the Xelor moved forward, sun glowing on his maskless face covered with stained, burned, gray bandages flailing in the morning wind, and one twitchy step after another, he headed to the city itself.

 

~°.°~

 

The sun was already quite high, and the small island city was swarming with life. The stone houses and canopies covered with striped fabric prevented the aggressive sunlight from assaulting the narrow street which the ragged man wrapped in gray bandages had just entered.  
He was talking to himself… or was it to the skinny, sickly boowolf he led?  
The fat sacrier behind the counter of a butchery on the corner didn’t know, but he chose to disappear into the depths of the shop anyway as the man passed by.

Nox became more and more aware of the fact that he was drawing attention to himself, and he wasn’t exactly comfortable with that.

“What will we do, Igole?” he asked the boowolf who trotted beside him, as if it was drawn to the Xelor by some strange, unexplainable force.  
It didn’t answer - obviously - but Nox didn’t care... or did he hallucinate the answer in his head?

This street was full of various shops. It was probably because it was so close to the beach, and a lot of tourists passed this way especially during the summer.  
It was pretty crowded today as well, people rushing through the street in both directions, talking loudly, and only the ones close to the Xelor gave him curious - and in the most cases scared - looks.  
Nox extricated himself from the mass of people and suddenly he found himself under one of the canopies, half hidden between hangers full of various clothes that were displayed outside of the shop.  
The boowolf crawled under them to get to him and almost tipped over one of the holders. Nox instinctively caught it to prevent it from falling and then noticed a hat on top of it, it almost fell down as the boowolf shook the construction. A standard hat, shaped like the top of a mushroom, with an opening for an eye which wasn’t as much functional as it was fashionable. It reminded him of something, an event that happened years ago.

Wasn’t it….

 

His thought was left unfinished, lost somewhere in the screaming that had filled his head ever since he lost his Eliacube.

His?

He shook his head abruptly, faster than a regular human ever could.

“We should get something to blend in with the people,” Nox decided. He snatched the hat and a random pair of pants and then focused and teleported away, leaving the confused boowolf behind.  
Not for long though. “Igole” inhaled the salty air of the street and set off to the place where its master had just disappeared to.

He wasn’t far.

Only a few meters from the shop, standing behind a huge flower pot with creeping wine growing in it, Nox was putting on the pants he had “borrowed”, the hat already sitting on his bandaged head.  
He didn't wait for the boowolf to get to him and disappeared into a somewhat darker and much calmer side street.  
The animal was quick despite its emaciated stature and it caught up to Nox pretty soon. It found him murmuring to himself once again with that slightly high pitched smooth voice which drew the animal to this insane Xelor so much…  
“...so, why do you think he sent us here of all places, Igole? I’m certain that it was him, even an idiot would recognize that... I doubt it was an accident. Xelor never does anything accidentally so **why?** ”

Nox stopped.

There was someone in the distance in the front of him, no, more than one...  
For two hundred years he was gathering Wakfu, for two hundred years he was losing himself and fading away with only one task in mind, but he could recognize this silhouette anywhere.

“Gallante?”

The silhouette disappeared behind the corner and three smaller figures followed her, apparently arguing about something.  
Nox's eyes narrowed under the bandages.

“Of course, I should have known it! It's not too late yet, not yet, ahahahaha….  
This is why he sent us here, this must be it, Igole! We moved not only in space, we moved in time, ah that tricky god...”

Nox grabbed the boowolf around the neck and stared into its empty eyes, his face so close to its muzzle that the shadow his hat cast buried them both in the darkness. Only one glowing eye was visible between the bandages on Nox’s face… his insanity was shining straight through it.  
He was talking faster and faster, ignoring the natural pauses in the sentences, his voice becoming higher the longer he spoke.

“I can do it, I can fix my life’s clock, forget the past, why to even look in the past when I can change it?  
I can't afford to affect my other self because that would mean I would disappear and never do it in the first place, infinite cycle, hahahaha... Xelor, why are you so evil?”

Nox’s visible eye started twitching and the boowolf attempted to back away, letting out another terrified whimper. The Xelor strengthened his grip and laughed again, but there wasn't even a hint of happiness in the cackling noise he made.

“But I can save them and take them far away, we will be a happy family once again, we can do that, can't we, Igole? My past self will never know, and the flow of events will not be altered, isn't this the island that was swallowed by the sea?  
I remember it like it happened yesterday…”

Nox raised his head and let the boowolf go, standing up in one mechanical motion.  
He could feel the power filling his body, his own magic upkept by his urge to live, the sheer willpower to pursue his goal that was keeping him alive all those years.  
He had a new goal now, and there was nothing that could stop him from achieving it.

A series of short teleports opened the hunt.  
The boowolf ran beside him, panting like crazy, and its paws soon hit the water, where did that came from?

Someone screamed on the street he just left and very soon it all turned into a mess, people running in all directions as a big wave filled the little square with seawater, taking stands, hangers, canopies and various merchandise with it.

It was happening.

Nox gabbed the boowolf by the skin of its neck and floated up, determined to locate and retrieve Gallante and the kids before it was too late.

He couldn't teleport while holding another being without it turning inside out in the most gorey and nasty way imaginable, but he was almost certain that he could carry them to safety this way.  
As much as he felt weak and purposeless right after he had been transported here, now his body was tingling with magic and he barely even felt the weight of the animal he carried.

He floated around the corner as fast as he could, another wave following him like an enraged taur, searching the street for the familiar faces he saw just moments ago…  
How much he wished he still had his Noxines!

He passed by a small api tree which was wrecked and broken by the wave crashing into it right after. He was running out of time.  
Suddenly he spotted them, standing on the stairs of the third floor in an attempt to avoid at least the first wave, it was her!  
There was nowhere to go from there, it was the highest she could ascend, and so the Iopette sat on the floor, hugging her three kids… _His three kids…_

Nox stopped, tilting his head in the big hat shaped like a mushroom cap, and she looked at him.

And then he threw the boowolf onto the same platform as his wife was sitting on… _His wife…_

The Xelor made a jerky, clock-like motion with both of his hands and ended it with the notoriously known gesture - his fingers chained in the symbol of the Infinity and the time stopped.  
It caught the animal mid-flight, its face keeping the shocked expression.

He let out a deep breath and turned his head to the wave that would have hit him in the next second. He flicked it with his finger, dividing a few water drops from it, and then floated upwards, beside the boowolf suspended in the air and towards the woman he loved so much.

He forgot so many details about this woman, so many little things had been lost in the two hundred years since he saw her last time…

She was looking at him and there was a hint of hope in her young face, while the kids were holding each other and crying, their tears unmoving, as if they were made of glass.  
Nox landed and walked around them, as if he was criticising a well sculpted group of statues.

Something in Gallante’s face made him feel calmer. He looked into it, and the screaming in his head went away. He wanted to look into that beautiful face for all eternity.

“Soon my dear, soon we will be happy and together,” he laughed and grabbed the three and the boowolf in his hands.  
They were surprisingly light, or maybe he had become this strong?  
It wasn't that simple though, and his first attempt to take off broke the spell he had cast and the wave splashed violently over his feet. He floated upwards, his hands shaking from the effort, holding so many bodies at once, even if they were light…

If his own body wasn't decayed past the point when he couldn't do it anymore, he would be sweating.

As the spell broke, the boowolf started to shake, Gallante clawed at his boney shoulders and the kids began to cry once again.  
Nox floated just above the rapidly rising sea, trying to find any safe spot he could land on.  
He knew that he couldn’t hold them much longer and he did everything to resist the urge to start teleporting because that would kill them all.  
The sun reflecting from the sea was blinding him, but he still managed to spot an abandoned fishing boat, probably snatched away by the flood.

“Oh here it is,” he remarked and he headed straight there, falling down on the planks like a stone.  
The boat was old and worn by the weather, but it floated, there were paddles attached to the sides and a torn sail he needed to just unroll to take advantage of the wind that came with the flood…

The Iopette was the one who spoke first.

“W-who are you?” she asked, visibly shaken as she stared at the stranger who had just saved the life of her and her kids.

I wasn’t a nice look. The skinny man standing in front of her looked like he could fall apart at any moment, almost a skeleton, a shining oval of light embedded in his chest… His face was hidden in the shadow of the wide hat, and maybe that was for the best. Baggy pants covered his bottom half except for the feet, which were bare aside from the dirty bandages that covered every inch of his body, and wet to his knees because of the flood he had just gone through.  
Water dripped on the slippery planks of the old boat, drip drip drip it was almost like the tick of the clock.

He flickered, disappeared, and reappeared right after, much closer to her.

“You don’t recognize your husband?” he asked, and then laughed maniacally with that unsettling high-pitched voice that was so typical for him.

“But that’s understandable, isn’t it, Igole?” he turned to the boowolf that was shivering near the woman and her kids.

“Two hundred years change you, no matter how much you want to stay the same.”

She opened her mouth.

“Milien? Is it really you?”

The man laughed again. It was giving her creeps, but she knew it was him… She recognized the voice, it was altered and odd, but it was the way her husband used to speak, and he called that… creature…. by the name of their family dog.  
The kids were hiding behind her, peeking over her shoulders as she sat there, they didn’t want to, but they stared anyway, in some kind of morbid curiosity.

“Two hundred years? It had been barely a few months… W-what happened to you?” she asked and slowly stood up to get closer to his face.

“Milien…”

Nox twitched, and with his head tilted, he cackled again.  
He grabbed her arm violently and squeezed it so hard that Gallante whined in pain.

“Doesn’t matter, now we are together, we will be happy, ahahaha... I’ll never lose you again, never!”

“Let me go!” she screamed and tore away her hand.

“You are nothing like Milien, I don’t know what have become of you, but my husband is dead! He died the day he found that damned cube!”

She pushed him away and he slipped on the slimy planks, his feet swinging upwards, but before he could hit the floor, he flickered and disappeared again, reappearing behind the Iopette.  
The kids, who were hiding there until now, fled as he appeared, the smallest one tripped over a loose piece of wood, but his big brother grabbed him and pulled him away while the girl ran to the cabin and kept the door open until the two boys rushed inside as well.  
Nox grabbed his wife by the shoulder before she managed to turn around.

“You are mine!” he said, anger raising in his voice,” I saved you, I worked on that for so long, I sacrificed everything to get you back, we are supposed to be happy together! As a family!”

He twisted her arm and she turned around to face him, terror mixed with anger occupying her face.

“You... You should have let us die rather than make the kids see you in this state,” she said, her voice trembling but calm.

Nox sprung his other arm, moving it in little sections like the second hand of the clock despite it being considerably faster, but before he could do anything, a massive Iop punch landed straight in his face, and he felt as if his jaw crumbled to dust.

The next set of events happened barely within a few seconds… He released Gallante, grabbing his face and letting out a pained sound, and she stood straight, hand prepared for another punch.  
The kids covered their mouths inside the cabin as they stared through the window as their mother punched the man who used to be their father so long, long ago.

_“You are mine!!!”_ he screamed and straightened his arm. The clock hand sword materialized in it, gloving particles arranged to create the razor sharp point, and he shoved the sword in Gallante’s chest before he even realized he had summoned it.

It was pure instinct.

Her expression changed in an instant, eyes wide opened and empty, blood appeared in the corner of her mouth and she lost ballance…

And then the time stopped.

It wasn’t entirely clear when the Xelor made his sword disappear to free his hands and to do the gesture of infinity, but it had been done, and everything stood still, the water, the boat, the laces on the rolled up sail, the boowolf, lying curled up on the side, the kids, screaming voicelessly in the cabin, and Gallante, hanging mid-fall… but her heart stopped beating just a few moments before the world froze.

The only one who moved was Nox.

He fell to his knees.

The reality of what had just happened was slowly coming to him, and he knew that stopping the time would do nothing about it, but he needed to think… He needed a timeout.

Gallante was dead, and it wasn’t the flood, it was him who had killed her, it had been him the whole time. Chaotic voices returned into his head the same moment as life left his wife’s body. His left eye started to twitch.

“What have I done…”

He turned his head to the blue sky.

“Is this what you wanted, Xelor?!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, “Did you want to teach me a lesson? Did you want to see me suffer?!”

_In the dimension far away, Xelor was watching the man who wasn’t even his true follower, he never was, but he interested him anyway. The struggles of the inhabitants of the World or Twelve were sometimes fun to watch, and this man was the most messed up individual he had stumbled upon in centuries. Well, to be fair, Xelor rarely took any interest in what was happening down there… He took this man from his time and placed him into another, like a researcher experimenting with ants, and now he was watching the events unfold without any personal feelings towards this mortal.  
“Fascinating,” was the only thing he said, and the silence fell once again._

~°.°~

The kids barricaded the cabin.

Nox didn’t try to get to them, he had an uncontrollable feeling that he’d hurt them, or even kill them like their mother if he did. He set the sail and tried to catch the best possible wind to get somewhere, he had no idea where, just to find a piece of land where he could leave the boat and then disappear from their life.

 

It didn’t take long and the boat approached a sandy beach and from the style of the ruins that stood on it, it was Sufokia. It was obvious that this piece of land wasn’t an actual beach until the Ogrest’s Chaos came. Some houses were deep in the water, some in ruins, and there were people running back and forth on the shore trying to recover lost items.  
A chair floated past Nox’s boat, and as it did, the boowolf who was slowly getting used to name Igole sniffed it and sneezed.  
During their time on the sea, the Xelor discovered a medicine chest under the deck and spent a good chunk of time writing incantations on the bandages he recovered from there, and then wrapped the boowolf in them. Igole didn’t protest, the animal had already surrendered to its fate and was now staring into the water, almost touching it with it’s bandaged head.

Nox rolled up the sail and grabbed the paddles.

The people on the shore had noticed the boat already and started waving at it, and Nox realized again that nobody here knew of the deeds he had done for a simple reason… He hadn’t done them yet.  
His mind wandered to dead Gallante in the middle of the sea, and a lonely tear soaked into his bandages.

He stiffened and waved back, the paddle in one hand, and let the people help him pull the boat onto the shore.

“There are three kids in the cabin,” he said, “please take care of them.”  
His voice was oddly serious, there wasn’t even a hint of the manic laughter he had a penchant for.  
He lowered his head and the hat covered his face entirely, then placed one hand on the bandaged Igole and disappeared together with the boowolf...

~°.°~

“I’ll be right there!”

Someone knocked on the door of the small house in Sufokia, but when the little Ecaflip boy opened it, there was nobody there, just something small and shiny on the floor.

“Oh look, another one!” he said as he grabbed the little clockwork bird that was standing on the doorstep.

“It was the Spirit of the Lost Time,” he said in a serious and almost didactic manner as he looked up to his slightly taller Iop brother who came to look who the hell was knocking on the door at this hour.

“Nonsense,” the Iop frowned, “it’s just a stupid fairy tale. And you are stupid too if you believe it,” he added and punched his shoulder, not too hard, it was just a play between the two. If they continued, the Iop boy would have scratches on his face pretty soon.

“You are the one who’s stupid, Manea,” the Ecaflip frowned and hugged the little bird, carefully so that he wouldn’t damage the delicate mechanism, and put it on the shelf beside the other clockwork toys and puppets he had gathered to this day.

“The Spirit of the Lost Time is real and he has been guarding our family for centuries, my grandma told me, as her grandma told her and so on! It’s true!”

“Whatever,” Manea said and headed to the kitchen, leaving the little Eca standing alone at the opened door.

“Thank you,” he said into the darkness. He wasn’t even sure if there is anyone to listen, but he said it anyway.

“It’s a beautiful bird.”

There was someone to hear the praise, though, and he lowered his head after the Eca said those words. Behind the bushes, there stood a man, hidden and unsure. His bandages were new, and his armor polished, but it hid a body that was almost a skeleton covered by dried skin. He was dressed up in clothes not unlike the ones he had worn when he first encountered Grougaloragran, (yes he remembered now, that was when he wore that hat!) and he stood silent, watching the little Ecaflip boy close the door.

Beside him, there stood a dog, well fed and happy - he was wagging his tail. It was Igole. Forty-first in the line of Igoles, but Nox always thought it’s the original one, every time...

This was the anniversary.

This was the day when one Nox disappeared to the past, and there was now only one left. He was unique once again, and he didn’t have to care if he changed the events of the past.

He was free.

For two hundred years this man had pursued his goal to bring his family back, and for another two hundred years, the only thing that kept him alive was the desire to protect what he had managed to save.

His kids had already died, but they had died of old age, and he had ensured that nothing bad ever happened to them. For two hundred years he had been making little presents to his children, the children of his children, all the generations that had passed, and he watched over them as his family grew.

He stood silent, and he stared at the house, face under his mask devoid of any expression.  
He never laughed again ever since he left that boat on the Sufokian shore.

If he wanted, he could enter into their lives at any moment, but the sight of dead Gallante always invaded his mind when he began to even consider this option.  
Two hundred years ago, he killed the woman he loved the most, the woman he was trying to save.

He deeply despised this past version of himself, each of the versions he remembered, even the one who found the eliacube in the cave four centuries ago. Will he ever learn?

“I will have to do it one day, Igole, won’t I,” he turned to the dog, unfazed by the fact that the animal couldn’t actually answer him. Or maybe he hallucinated the answer in his head. These last years he spent in hiding didn’t really help his sanity either.

“Oh well…”

Nox inhaled deeply… then took a step forward and knocked on the door.

~°.°~

_Somewhere in the divine dimension, Xelor looked at Sacrier, who once again appeared behind the God of Time._  
_A single teardrop was running down her cheek._  
 _“It wasn’t that bad, the world is still running,” he remarked and turned back, immobile like an ancient statue of himself._

_Xelor didn’t give a shit about the problems of the Twelvians._


End file.
